Monthly Archives: April 2019

1. Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist Guide to Feeling Worthy by Adreanna Limbach. “Using The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path as a guide, Tea and Cake with Demons guides us to meet all our most common demons—shame, perfectionism, fixation, and self doubt—all while myth-busting the cultural narratives that keep us stuck and revealing the unshakable nature of our inherent self worth.”

2. The Foxes, a photo album from Chuck Wendig. “These are shots of the foxes (whole family, this year) that live in the woods out front of our house, and just behind my writer shed.”

15. Gay Mag call for submissions. “Gay is a new publication partnership between Roxane Gay and Medium. Laura June Topolsky is the Deputy Editor and Kaitlyn Adams serves as Managing Editor. We will be publishing work weekly, covering a wide variety of topics. We will also assemble ambitious, compelling quarterly themed issues. We are now accepting submissions, on a rolling basis, and look forward to hearing from new and established writers who possess original voices.”

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1. 14 days left at CSU!!! Yes, I have officially started counting days rather than weeks. After being in this space with these people doing variations of this work for 19 years, I’m now down to only 14 more days. It feels great and awful, exactly right and weird. It’s also like a break up where even if it’s mutual, there’s some grief for the thing that’s ending. And I know how things go for me: any big change, (and this one is major), leaves me unsettled for the next three years. It has always taken me that amount of time to make the full shift, to complete the transition, so this isn’t actually “over” in 14 days. All that said, I’m ready to begin.

2. I got my car back!!! Seriously, it seems like some kind of miracle. One extreme hailstorm, four months, and $10,000 worth of repairs later — just in time to get my snow tires taken off. It’s weird how many people heard the amount of repairs required and thought they should have just given me a new car. Um, it’s only two years old and still worth $30,000, WHY would they scrap it and give me a new one?! That makes no sense.

3. Morning walks. Eric found a den of fox kits that I haven’t gotten to see yet, so that’s my mission the next few mornings I walk — find the fox puppies and see them for myself.

4. Taking care of myself. I am very lucky to have the time, the support, and the resources to be able to do what I need to do for the places that hurt.

Relaxing with some heat and “stim” after physical therapy

5. My tiny family. They are the best, my favorites.

Bonus joy: a smart and kind physical therapist, aqua aerobics, sitting in the sauna, my infrared heating pad, writing with Chloe’ and Mikalina, clementines, everything turning so green, the sound of birds singing in the morning, computer glasses, reading in bed at night while Eric and the dogs sleep, wearing pajamas all day, having all the laundry done by lunch on Friday, lunch, fresh bread, sushi, good TV (finished Special on Netflix and started Ramy on Hulu), poetry, my daffodils coming back when I was worried they wouldn’t, coffee with Carrie, laughing with Eric.

11. For Sri Lanka, a Long History of Violence on The New York Times. “After a civil war that dragged on for nearly three decades, Sri Lanka had been enjoying a decade of relative calm. That was shattered on Sunday when a coordinated bombing attack killed more than 200 people. Here is some context to help you understand the latest events in the small island nation.”

15. Another Warning Sign. “The Mueller report is of course about Russian interference in the 2016 election and about the White House’s interference in the resulting investigation. But I couldn’t help also reading the report as a window into the manner of administration that characterizes the Trump era, and therefore as another warning about how fundamentally unprepared our government is for a significant crisis or emergency.” In related news, Highlights From The Mueller Report, Annotated.

22. African American Studies, UCLA, another free video course available on YouTube. “An intensive introduction to African American political thought that focuses on major ideological trends and political philosophies as they have been applied and interpreted by African Americans.”

23. African-American History: Modern Freedom Struggle (A Free Course from Stanford). “Taught by historian Clayborne Carson, the editor of the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., this Stanford University course–entitled African-American History: Modern Freedom Struggle–provides an introduction to African-American history, ‘with a particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930.'”

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1. Spring. It’s officially here. I looked out into our backyard just the other day, the sliding glass door open because it was nice and sunny outside, and said to Eric, “our yard is so green!”

An older picture of my desk, back when it was a lot cleaner

2. Only 3.5 weeks left at CSU!!! Every once in a while, I catch myself thinking I maybe made a mistake quitting, that maybe I could have made it work, and then I immediately laugh because that’s just ridiculous. And then I have a day like yesterday where I worked SO hard, did so many good things, and then someone was shitty to me, and I thought “May 15th can’t come soon enough.” The only other time in my life when I gave myself permission to do what was absolutely right for me no matter what other people thought or whether or not it even made sense was when I moved to Colorado to be with Eric, so I think it’s safe to trust myself this time too. Can you imagine how awesome it will be if this turns out as good as my marriage?!

3. My last module of my 500 hour yoga teacher certification. It’s the vinyasa module, which everyone had told me was hard, but I’m really loving it so far. If you don’t know, to become certified to teach you do a 200 hour training, which is like getting your undergraduate degree. Then, if you want to keep going, you can do the next 300 hours and become 500 hour certified, which is like having your Master’s degree. You can go on to do another 200 and become 700 hour certified, but most people I know get 500 hour certified and then specialize in something. For me, that’s yoga for people in bigger bodies, adaptive yoga, and restorative yoga. I’ll have to teach a capstone at the end of this module that incorporates something from all the modules for this 300 hours, and I’m actually looking forward to it even though it’s a lot. During this session, I am obsessed with taking myself out to lunch at Slyce Pizza Co.

The ducks are easier to spot, but can you find the heron?

4. Morning walks. It’s getting so light so early again. On Thursday morning, I only had to have my headlamp on for about 30 minutes, probably didn’t really even need it, and the sky was amazing. We’ve been seeing the heron fishing in the river almost every morning, and the ducks and geese are busy getting ready for babies. Every once in a while we see raccoons and foxes or a beaver, and the herd of white tailed deer are always around even if we don’t run directly into them.

Heron fishing. Can you see it?

I tried to get a picture of the moon, but the camera on my phone doesn’t capture low light shots very well

5. My three boys. The two with four legs who are covered in fur, and the one who leaves me love notes on the kitchen counter.

Sam taking a nap with me

Bonus joy: lunch with Aramati, coffee with Carrie, aqua aerobics, sitting in the sauna, sunshine, people saying nice things about me, good TV (this week it’s a season of Fixer Upper I hadn’t seen yet), good books, sort of new to me music (Sol Rising, whose tracks I’d heard before, but I didn’t realize how many full albums he had that I’d like and would make really good music for yoga classes), bran muffins with dried raspberries, getting the laundry done on Friday morning, physical therapy, robins hopping around on the ground, bird song in the morning, things turning green, a new puppy, saying goodbye to an old puppy — the way he stood there wagging his tail with a toy in his mouth before he gave up and got on his bed and insisted I pet his head for the entire hour long visit, how happy Ringo is when he finds something he can pick up and carry for part of the walk (this week it was an adult sized single ski glove and a stick), the way Sam always wants to be right where I am, how Eric gets mad when someone is mean to me, how good he is at cheering me up.

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1. Healing Crayon’s Art Store. “I combine protest, play and self care to make art that helps people find their happy place in their body. I have recovered from an eating disorder and am a parent, social worker, artist and intersectional feminist. All profits from this site are donated to the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association in Newton, Massachusetts.” She also has a really great Instagram account.

5. To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself. “According to Pema Chödrön, we might think that knowing ourselves is a very ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look clearly and honestly at ourselves, we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others.”

4. Snow. We got another “bomb cyclone” which led to another half day off work. We got about a foot of really wet snow that’s almost all melted already.

My view for another 4.5 weeks.

5. My tiny family. Eric was gone last night, went to Lamar, Colorado to give a presentation, but he’ll be home tonight. The boys have been really good for me while he’s been gone, are such good company.

From our walk this morning

6. It’s my mom’s birthday today! I’m pretty lucky to be in my 50s and still have both my parents still around, (all four, if you count Eric’s parents, which after 25 years are really mine too). This is one of my favorite pictures of us. I’m going to publish this post and try to call her. Neither one of us really likes talking on the phone, but we like talking to each other.

Bonus joy: the heron who has been fishing the same spot of the river most mornings, orange juice, going out to breakfast with Eric before he had to leave, aqua aerobics, sitting in the sauna, sitting on the couch in my pjs watching good TV, going to bed early so I can stay up late reading a good book, Eric being able to figure out a fix for our refrigerator so we didn’t have to buy a whole new one, my three interns and in particular their sense of humor, getting the laundry done on Friday, laughing during Pilates, yoga teacher training. friends who try so hard to be better people, marionberry jam, breakfast for dinner, being able to video chat with Eric.

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1. New Music: Sarah BareillesAmidst the Chaos. There’s a song on it, “No Such Thing,” that is breaking my heart because it’s so true, about loving someone and losing them, about grief and the way it doesn’t really ever go away, but neither does the love. I have listened to this at least 30 times this morning.

2. #The100DayProject. I love this, and someday when I have more time, I plan on trying it out. “#The100DayProject is a free art project that takes place online. Every spring, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. Anyone can join (yes, that means you!). The idea is simple: choose a project, do it every day for 100 days, and share your process on Instagram with the hashtag #The100DayProject.”

People that don’t have big goals are thought of as a not being very driven. It’s thought of as a bad thing, in life and in business. But why? Why, if a lot of goals past our human needs, are completely artificial and made up for the sake of setting something to run towards?

I think goals are weird because I don’t want or need them. Of course I want to cover my bases and live comfortably, but past that? I don’t need to 10X anything. I don’t want the stress, anxiety, or responsibility of having to work towards something monumental like that. I don’t need to crush my competition because they’re friends of mine.

There’s enough for everyone if no one person sets goals to take more than their share. Which doesn’t seem weird at all.